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Alibaba eyes offline play to expand india biz

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Alibaba eyes offline play to
expand India biz

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Contd…
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba plans a “direct entry“ into the Indian market this
year as the company looks at both online and offline play to increase its presence in
one of the world's largest retail markets. Top officials from the Jack Ma-led Chinese
company are understood to have spoken about the intention for a greater play
during a meeting with telecom and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who assured
the company that the govern ment would support their bid to expand operations.
Michael Evans, president of Alibaba group, met Prasad along with global MD K
Guru Kowrappan. When asked about the meeting with the minister, Evans said,
“We will come to India this year“. However, he refused to elaborate further.
Already , Alibaba has a near 40% stake in bill payments and e-commerce company
Paytm and holds 4% in e-tailer Snapdeal. Sources said the company wants to ride
the retail boom in India. It wants to grow its operations in the country as orga nized
retail percolates to the smaller towns and cities.

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Contd…
However, there is still no cla rity on the route the company will take. With the BJP-led NDA
government remaining cold to FDI in multi-brand retail, Ali baba's direct entry into the offli
ne business remains doubtful The only option is to get into the wholesale cash-and-carry
segment or get in via the singlebrand retail. On the online front, the company will need to
work out a way to offer products through its platform if it wants to enter the B2C segment.
However, the company may look at growing its engagement and investments in the online-
to-offline (O2O) business, something that other Chinese companies like Baidu (search
giant) is also considering. The Baidu group is targeting the large number of startups
operating in the O2O space and these include local startups such as restaurant search
service provider Zomato, online movie and event tickets seller Bookmyshow and food
retailer Big Basket.
Ma has already said that Alibaba will focus on the Indian market in a bigger way as the
company increases the number of Indian suppliers on its platform. The Chinese company
has placed a high-level team in India to look at increased sourcing opportunities from the
country , which is already the second-biggest global supplier to the platform after China.